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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (May 27, 1971)
Student fee bill passes committee By DEAN WHEELER Of the Emerald SALEM (Special)—A motion giving all control of incidental fees to the State Board of Higher Education was passed by a legislative subcommittee in Salem Wednesday, despite student-led opposition to the proposal. Students had attempted to insure the defeat of HB1589, a motion which took control of incidental fees away from students and their institutions. The education subcommittee of the Joint Ways and Means Committee trans ferred Sen. Lynn Newbry’s (R-Jackson) amendment to HB 1589 to the full com mittee for action along with other higher education budget reports. The proposal had been amended earlier in the legislative session by Rep. Roger Martin (R-Clackamas) to specify that from student incidental fees at least $5 per student per term would be allocated to a student educational fee, $5 for a student center fee and $6 for a student athletic fee. As it is now amended, incidental fees will pay for only those activities not essential for education, while those deemed necessary for the educational process will be paid out of tuition charges. Newbry’s amendment does not at tempt to define what is essential for education and what is not, but delegates that responsibility to the State Board. If the bill passes through the full committee and both houses of the Oregon Legislature, the State Board will be required to report back to the State Emergency Board of the Legislature before the 1972-73 academic year. The original bill proposed total student control over the allocation of certain in cidental fees and had ASUO support. As a result of the two amendments, the bill lost student support and at the time Sen. Newbry made his amendment ASUO President-elect Iain More suggested the bill be “killed.” Sen. Betty Roberts (D-Multnomah) told the Wednesday subcommittee meeting when the amendment was moved included in the bill “I don’t think the amendment is necessary. The students are working out the incidental fee problem with the administration and should be given the two years (the coming bien nium) to work it out within the system.” More, in a statement issued after the amendment’s passage, said, “I am disappointed that the subcommittee passed Sen. Newbry’s amendment. It might be a useful long term goal, but summer 1972 is far too early.” One of More's greatest concerns had been the allocation of fees to the Univer sity’s Athletic Department which by all indications would be considered by the State Board to be part of the necessary educational process. In a statement More distributed to the subcommittee members, he claimed to have had “tentative approval from the University administration, the budget office and the AD” in regard to his proposed budget. More's budgetary proposal, which was approved by the ASUO Senate last week, called for a change in the method of fun ding athletics at the University. Faculty Senate delays action on ROTC motions By PEARL BARREN Of the Emerald Confronted by a stack of reports and motions on the ROTC issue, the Faculty Senate Wednesday began sifting through various recommendations on what the University should do about its military program. The senate will meet again Friday to try to come up with some advice on the issue to give the general faculty which will meet next week. On the agenda for the general faculty meeting are two proposals on the ROTC program. One proposes that the current program be phased out and that the University investigate the possibility of setting up an interdisciplinary program for study of the military. The other proposes that the faculty endorse a plan formulated by Fourth Dist. Rep. John Dellenback to move ROTC off campus. At the Wednesday meeting, the senate spent two hours going over reports and motions and finally voted to postpone the matter to give senate members time to draft additional motions. Taking up other business, the senate voted 18-9 to recommend that the general faculty approve a proposal to eliminate the academic ranks of assistant professor, associate professor and professor. According to the proposal, the single rank “professor” would be used to designate all three categories. Geography professor Alvin urqunart, one of the sponsors of the motion, said ranks are usually used to signify certain “duties, responsibilities, rights or privileges.” But, he added that he didn’t “see any of these which go along with rank at the University.” Another sponsor, Clyde Patton, geography professor, said that in terms of determining salary increases and promotion “if we abolish rank, we will be forced to pay attention to other matters involved.” Education professor Grace Graham, also a sponsor, called the ranks a “reward and punishment system.” She said she thought the President’s Advisory Council “could spend more time on more important things,” such as awarding tenure, if it did not have to award ranks to faculty members. Those objecting to the proposal said rankings do have meaning within their departments and questioned whether eliminating the titles would hurt recruitment of new faculty members. Fred Cuthbert, dean of the School of Ar chitecture and Allied Arts, said awarding everyone the rank of professorship “could make it more difficult to get rid of marginal faculty.” However, others agreed with economics professor Robert Campbell, who said “it’s a step in the right direction.” Also at the meeting, the senate gave a “do pass” recommendation to a proposal which would establish methods for the approval of SEARCH courses. In considering the ROTC issue, the senate was presented with three reports— a majority and minority report from the ROTC Advisory Committee and another report from the senate’s own sub committee. The majority report of the Advisory Committee, signed by seven members of the ten-member student-faculty com mittee, states that the University ROTC programs are “structurally incompatible with the organization and basic respon sibility of the University.” It recommends that the University President negotiate with the Department of Defense, members of Congress and other universities and appropriate bodies to develop an acceptable substitute for the present program. It states that in any such program faculty should be employed by the University, and any outside funding for the program should be in the form of a grant the University receives and ad ministrates. Herbert Bisno. chairman of the Advisory Continued on Page 2 David Harris, nationally-known spokesman for non-violent war resistance, will speak at 7:30 p.m. tonight in McArthur Court. He will discuss resistance to the draft and non-violence during the free lecture. Harris is a former student body president of Stanford University and was released from prison recently after ser ving nearly two years for refusal to be inducted into the U.S. Army. He is married to folk singer Joan Baez. Freed asks for hearing University political science teaching fellow Jeff Freed has requested that a formal hearing be held this summer on charges brought against him by the University administration. Freed was charged with conduct that violates the Administrative Rules of the State Board of Higher Education during an early morning May 5 demonstration at the Army ROTC building. In a letter addressed to Associate Dean of Faculties Marshall Wattles today, Freed said he wanted a hearing and that he would be able to be on campus by June 21 to begin. He had 10 days to request a hearing, according to a letter written to him by Wattles May 17. Freed was charged specifically with “failure to perform the responsibilities of an academic staff member,” at the demonstration where about 20 persons occupied the ROTC building at 7:30 a.m. until police asked them to leave in the early afternoon. He told the Emerald Wednesday that he has been told by “at least two” faculty members that they would volunteer their help for his defense. Twenty-six-year-old Freed, who has been a teaching fellow at the University since fall, 1969, called the case against him a “sacrificial lamb” in his letter to Wattles. He further called it “a yearly ritual,” referring to the firing of Irving Wainer last summer from a research assistantship in the Institute of Molecular Biology, on similar charges. Freed called the Wainer firing and the charges against him not good strategy, “since it seems that people have con tinually taken actions against rulers, and the number of troublemakers grows.” He wrote that the charges against him are a “ritual,” saying, “The Ad ministration can have its ritual, but you’re not going to stop the people. The people will surely win.” His letter concluded, “I hope that this letter finds you and other members of the Administration deep in thought about your eventual extinction.” Freed’s alleged actions, as stated in Wattles May 17 letter, include entering the ROTC building “with no apparent reason other than to disturb and harass,” thereby interfering “with the normal business of an academic department.” Also, the letter states that Freed allegedly entered a classroom where a class was in session, “causing that class to be terminated before its scheduled time.” Freed also allegedly defaced walls, broke a telephone, seized all phones and abused ROTC staff physically by “ ‘shooting’ faculty members with water guns.” Student board member bill passes Senate SALEM (Special)—The Oregon Senate passed a bill adding one voting student member to the State Board of Higher Education by a 16-14 vote Wed nesday, after only a few minutes of discussion. The bill, SB 278, authorizes the ad dition of one voting and one non-voting undergraduate student member to the State Board of Higher Education, raising the number of voting directors to ten and total members to eleven. The measure will now go to the House and, if approved there, will be passed on to Gov. Tom McCall who has already in dicated his support. The two student board members would serve one year terms, with the non-voting member replacing the voting student at the end of the latter’s term. The two will be chosen by the Governor from any of the institutions in Oregon under the authority of the State Board. Their terms would start Dec. 15, 1971. The students would be required to carry a full 12-hour load each of their terms on the board. Sen. Wallace Carson (R-Marion) in troduced the bill on the Senate floor Wednesday morning, telling the assembly, “It’s important to have students on the State Board. When I toured the campuses shortly after the spring disturbances last year, I found it necessary for us to bridge the gap between the State Board and the student. I think the passage of this bill is one way to do it.” Addressing himself to some of the criticisms already voiced on the bill in its previous hearings in committee, Carson said, “Students can assimilate the knowledge and wisdom necessary to operate efficiently on the board. I think the students we’ve seen here during the past year are evidence of that.” In the only statement heard against the bill, Sen. C.R. Hoyt (R-Benton-Polk) said, “It is important to have student input into the board, but this bill is not an effective vehicle. The state board members have to put in so much time as to make it almost a full-time job.” He testified that an effective way for students to make their concerns known to the State Board was “through their student organization on campus." Sen. Edward Fadeley (D-Lane) spoke after Hoyt and told the assembly, “This bill is one which will force people closer together and assist in reconciliation and a better system of higher education (in Oregon ” Debate was closed by the Senate President after Carson’s closing comment, “The students want a role—I think we ought to give them a chance.”